The Martial Art I Can't Live Without

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu has been compared to chess, philosophy, even psychoanalysis. But its real appeal is on the mat.

- By Stephanie Hayes

On November 12, 1993, in a sports arena in Denver, a lean Brazilian man in an outfit resembling a pair of pajamas stepped into an octagon to fight. There were no weight classes or judges, and very few rules. His opponent, a dead-eyed Dutch karate champion named Gerard Gordeau, had already beaten two other men that night, including a 420-pound Samoan sumo wrestler he’d kicked so hard that bits of tooth got lodged in his foot. But Royce Gracie was unfazed. In less than two minutes, the jiu-jitsu black belt brought Gordeau to the ground, got behind him, and wrapped an arm beneath his chin to secure a rear naked choke. Gordeau tapped frantically on the mat to signal his submission. The audience at the inaugural Ultimate Fighting Championship event went wild.

Up until then, martial arts in the American popular imagination had featured fighters in cartoonish striking mode—a bare-chested Bruce Lee sending men flying with a single kick or punch, or Ralph Macchio, as the Karate Kid, raising his limbs like a praying mantis. The ground fighting art honed in Brazil over generations by an entire Gracie dynasty was virtually unknown here. Within months of UFC 1, which both critics and fans saw as a Gracie infomercial, membership quadrupled at the California academy that Rorion Gracie, one of Royce’s brothers, had started a few years earlier. In the decades since, Brazilian jiu-jitsu has exploded in the United States, and not just under Gracie leadership; every day, thousands of devotees head into humid, rank basement academies across the country, hoping to … well, what are we looking for?